Stransky steals show

COMMENTARY

Steve Lander, hero or villain? In light of the referees' own dictum that the most effective officials are also the least visible, it is the sort of question Lander would prefer to remain unasked. But there is no avoiding it; so central was he to events at Kingsholm on Saturday that to ignore his role in Leicester's decidedly chancy Pilkington Cup semi- final victory over Gloucester would make about as much sense as discussing Watergate without giving Nixon a mention.

While the Cherry and White hordes fumed into their foaming pints and laid their side's 26-13 defeat squarely at the door of what they considered to be Lander's myopic pedantry, Tigers supporters were quite happy to kiss and make up with the man whose penalty try decision cost them the cup last May. "Always said he was a good 'un," smiled one Midlander who, less than a year ago, would have signed up for a lynch mob at the drop of his red, white and green hat.

Similarly, the two coaches were at odds on the issue. Gloucester's Richard Hill thought his side had been whistled out of the game as a result of their "failure to cheat as cleverly as the opposition", while Leicester's Bob Dwyer, with an expression of purest innocence on his face, was more inclined to buy the ref a beer.

He would have needed to move quickly to beat Joel Stransky to the bar. The murderously accurate South African goalkicker took full advantage of Lander's early objection to all things Gloucester, stroking three penalties in the opening 12 minutes and a fourth on the half-hour to leave his side in clear blue water at 12-3. Two of those penalty calls were on the iffy side of dodgy and the last an absolute travesty, but they all come the same to the cold-eyed six-shooter from Pietermaritzburg. Miscarriages of justice are for the victims to sort out, not the executioner.

The way Stransky has performed since packing his thermals and crossing the equator last December, there is nothing he needs less than Easter presents from a referee. It cost Leicester pounds 300,000 to lure him away from a life of sun, sea, sand and safaris - big bucks indeed in the British marketplace - but it is difficult to imagine any club buying better in the foreseeable future.

Having half-won the game once with that early flurry of penalties - "I just couldn't understand what some of them were for," Hill moaned - Stransky spiked an enthralling Gloucester resurgence by dropping two goals, one from under the posts, the other from the far horizon, in the 72nd and 74th minutes. He needed no help from Lander for those and the home side had already accepted defeat when Steve Hackney exposed Mike Peters' inexperience on the wing to top and tail it with a try in the final minute.

Yet for some 26 minutes in the second half, the Tigers were not so much hunters as hunted. Gloucester's front row gave the vaunted ABC club all the trouble they could handle at the set-piece - how odd that Lander should have given Stransky six precious points by twice penalising the home trio in the face of a full afternoon's worth of evidence - and it needed a prodigious effort from both Martin Johnson and the wonderfully gifted Eric Miller to keep the visitors afloat.

Not even they could prevent the 48th-minute try that gave Gloucester the scent of a prime kill. Craig Emmerson, a small-change signing from Morley, made one big monkey of the Leicester midfield with a meandering 40-metre run - "my fault entirely," Stransky admitted afterwards - and when Chris Catling, the classiest act in a surprisingly potent back division, appeared on his centre's shoulder, he was strong enough to make the line despite the heavy poundage of the entire Leicester pack on his shirt- tails.

On the face of it, then, a hugely encouraging effort from the West Countrymen, founded on local talent underpinned by immense pride rather than imported mercenary skills underwritten by a seven-figure bank balance. The reality is somewhat different, however, and Hill knows it.

The former Bath and England scrum-half has worked a minor miracle with limited resources at Kingsholm, but he now needs more than limitless enthusiasm and a magician's hat to secure a rugby future for the most passionate rugby city in England. Not only is he prepared to fly in the face of cherished principles by purchasing at least one foreign player and probably more to bolster his back division, he has already taken significant steps towards a first signing.

"Players in England are on such massive salaries and tied into such long contracts that it's almost out of the question to buy nationally, much as I would like to do so," said the coach, a founder member of the England for the English school of rugby thought but a realist all the same. "I'm not interested in taking the Saracens or Harlequins route and flooding the side with foreigners, and I'm still convinced that junior clubs in and around Gloucester will continue to provide good, hard forwards who will lay down their lives for their home team. But Leicester have shown with Stransky what can be achieved by one inspired purchase and I think we've reached the stage here where we need to follow their example."

That, as they say, is professionalism: the sacrificing of long-term development on the altar of short-term gain. Hill has fought a brave and lonely battle against the inevitable and lost hands down, but then he always knew he would. Now, with a significant cash injection about to be ratified by the Kingsholm membership, he can put that very honourable defeat behind him and start playing everyone else's game.

Gloucester: Try Catling; Conversion Mapletoft; Penalties Mapletoft 2. Leicester: Try Hackney; Penalties Stransky 5; Drop goals Stransky 2.

Gloucester: C Catling; M Peters, C Emmerson, M Roberts, M Lloyd; M Mapletoft, S Benton; A Windo, P Greening, A Deacon, R Fidler, D Sims (capt), P Glanville, S Devereux, N Carter.

Leicester: J Liley; S Hackney (L Lloyd, 81), S Potter, W Greenwood, C Joiner; J Stransky, A Healey; G Rowntree, R Cockerill, D Garforth, M Johnson (capt), N Fletcher, J Wells (D Richards, 62), E Miller, N Back.

Referee: S Lander (Liverpool).